“Every man, woman, and child for miles. Crona Nagle, d’you remember her? She’s ninety-two years of age, hasn’t left the house since God was a child, but she got the grandson to drive her down yesterday. And she’d a feckin’ hypothesis of her own, o’ course. She reckons it was Johnny Reddy that done it, ’cause one time Melanie O’Halloran snuck outa the house to meet him and came home smelling of drink and aftershave. I didn’t even remember Crona was Melanie’s granny. Not that I’d blame her for keeping it quiet. Melanie, like.”
“I’d say Crona’s not the only one betting on Johnny,” Lena says, stretching to take an apple from the fruit shelf.
Noreen gives her an odd sideways glance. “There’s a couple, all right. The only thing is, why would Johnny want your man dead? That fella was Johnny Reddy’s whatd’youcallit, the goose with the golden eggs. With him gone, Johnny’s got no fortune coming in, and he’s not the big man in town any more, no one’ll be buying him drink now and laughing at his jokes; he’s the same aul’ wee scutter that you wouldn’t trust with tenpence. And besides…” She stares at the tin of tuna like she’d forgotten its existence, and shoves it onto a random shelf among the dish scrubbers. “Dessie, now,” she says, “he says he wouldn’t wanta see Johnny arrested. Johnny’s weak as water; if that detective fella went after him, he’d spill the beans about all that nonsense with the gold. Trying to get the lads in hot water, like, to take suspicion offa himself. He wouldn’t mind what that’d mean for Sheila and the kids; he’d only care about saving his own skin. And Dessie’s not the only one. People don’t want it to be Johnny.”
Lena finds some change in her pocket, waves fifty cents at Noreen, and leaves it on top of the till to cover the apple. “Then what do they reckon?”
Noreen blows out air. “You name it, I’ve had someone in here saying it. And then they get their ideas mixed in together, till you wouldn’t know who thought what—there’s Ciaran Maloney came in saying it musta been just some roola-boola with drink taken all round, but then didn’t he get talking to Bobby, and he’s not fool enough to believe Bobby’s blather, but he ended up wondering was Rushborough maybe some kinda inspector sent down to look for people claiming grants they oughtn’t to be getting…” She shakes her head, exasperated. “There’s a few that think ’twas over land. They reckon the gold was only a whatd’youcallit, a cover story; your man Rushborough had a claim on some land, through his granny, and he was over here sussing it out, and someone didn’t take well to that. I know the Feeneys do be awful pushovers, but they wouldn’t hand over their land to some blow-in without a fight. Give me one of them apples, go on; maybe it’ll cool me down.”
Lena tosses her an apple and puts another fifty cents on the till. Noreen rubs the apple clean on the side of her slacks. “Clodagh Moynihan’s convinced—dead certain, now—that Rushborough stumbled on young people doing drugs, and they put him outa the way. I don’t know what kinda notion Clodagh has of drugs, at all. I said to her, why would anyone be at that carry-on in the middle of the night on a mountain road, and would they not just do a runner when they heard him coming, but there’s no talking to her. If she hadn’ta been such an awful Holy Mary in school, she’d have more of a clue.”
It occurs to Lena that she, apparently alone in the county, has no hypothesis about who killed Rushborough. She doesn’t particularly care. From her perspective, there are a number of other questions that are considerably more pressing.
“Ah well,” she says, biting off another piece of apple, “ ’tisn’t our problem to solve, lucky for us. That detective fella—Nealon, Cal says his name is—he’s stuck with it. Didja meet him yet?”
“I did. He came in at lunchtime looking for sandwiches, if you don’t mind. I nearly asked him does this place look like a feckin’ deli, but in the end I sent him next door to Barty for a toastie.”
Noreen does in fact make sandwiches on occasion, for people she likes. Apparently Nealon doesn’t fall into this category, which strikes Lena as odd: she would have expected Noreen, as a gifted amateur, to jump on the chance of cozy chats with a professional. “What’s he like?” she asks. “I haven’t met him yet.”
“Big smiley feckin’ head on him,” Noreen says darkly. “Coming in here, hail-fellow-well-met, joking about the weather, practically taking off his hat to Tom Pat Malone, if he’d had a hat. Doireann Cunniffe nearly wet her knickers for him, so she did. I’d never trust a charmer.” She cracks off a bite of apple with vindictive force.
“Cal says the man knows what he’s at,” Lena says.
She catches that odd sideways look from Noreen again. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing. Who does Cal reckon done it?”
“Cal’s retired. He reckons it’s not his problem.”
“Well,” Noreen says. “Let’s hope he’s right.”
“Go on,” Lena says. “Spit it out.”
